MOTHER 


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| Mother« 
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- Church 


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The Mother in the Church. 
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By LUCY RIDER SESER, Chicago. 
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In a phrase of striking beauty and suggestiveness, Paul calls 
the Church ‘‘the household of faith.’”” Wemay well study the 
comparison. Like the family the Church has its adult members 
and its little children, its strong and its weak, its robust and its 
-ailing ones. The pastor, set apart officially to minister in doc- 
trine and discipline, stands for the father. The laity, with its 
numerous auxiliary organizations composed of men and women, 
may well correspond to the older brothers and sisters. But— 
where is the mother? The Roman Catholic Church has felt so 
deeply the need of the feminine element in its organization that 
for nearly a thousand years it has denied its pastors the right of 
literal fatherhood that they may ideally be both father and 
mother tothe flock. The gift to the Roman Church of the Virgin 
Mary herself, deified increasingly in these later centuries, has 
been in farsighted response to the same ever-recurring demand. 
But Protestants understand how worse than useless are these_ 
unnatural make shifts. Our ideal, were we forced to give enough 
thought to the subject to formulate an ideal, is that the perfect 
| pastor, unrestrained in the social and family relations which go 
| to make up perfect manhood, unites in himself the qualities of | 
/an entire humanity— —feminine as well as masculine. But there 
| are two reasons why this ideal can never be realized. The (first) 
|is found in the very constitution of a man, by which he is una- 
dapted, mentally and spiritually, for much of the work of ‘‘the 
| household of faith;’’ and the second) appears in the artificial 
limitations placed upon every pastor—the social restrictions that / 
|bind him, and, above all, the unwritten law which, with rare 
exceptions, places only one mar at the head of a parish, no mat; 
‘ter if that parish numbers tens of thousands. * Nor can it be 
‘successfully maintained that woman’s helpful but necessarily 
limited activity in unofficial lines supplies the needs of the 
mother in the Church, even though this activity is a matter of 


*The school census of 1896 shows a population of ninety thousand 
people within a radius of eight blocks from Halsted Street Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, in Chicago. 


1 


rz aE ao el 


grateful comment the world over. For, if so, then the converse 
would hold, that because of the assistance of our stewards, 
trustees, class leaders and Sunday-school superintendents, who 
_are usually men, we do not need the pastor. 

There are two. chief sources from which we may hope to know 
(God’s will touching the fundamental needs of mankind—the 
Scriptures and that other great book, the human heart as it is 
revealed in the social conditions about us, What, first, has the 
Bible to tell us of the work of woman in the early Church? The 
record is fragmentary, but it is suggestive. The first hint of 
formal Church organization, aside from the apostolic college, 
was the appointment of the seven deacons. The occasion was 
the murmuring of the Grecian Jews ‘‘ because their widows were 
neglected in the daily ministrations.’’ These ‘‘widows” are 
popularly supposed to have been pensioners on the Church, and 
we frankly concede that the weight of authority is in favor of 
this view. But no less a scholar than Dean J. S. Howson, the 
well-known co-author with Conybeare of the standard Life of 
St. Paul, contends earnestly that such an understanding is not 
in accord with the spirit of the Church at that time.t He main- 
tains that we have here rather the first germs of that organiza- 
tion of almsgiving widows, or deaconesses, so well known in the 
later Church; and that these women received the bounty of the 
Church, not to expend it upon themselves, but to bestow it upon 
the poor about them; that even at this early time there began to - 
flow through woman’s hands those streams of beneficence which 
were so marked a characteristic of the early Church.{ And, in 
proof of this, we notice Paul’s direction concerning ‘“‘ widows” 
in I Tim. v. 9, Io, ‘‘ Let not a widow be taken into the number 
under threescore years old, . . . well reported of for good 
works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged 
strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved 
the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work.” 
These widows are commonly credited with having all been alms- 
receivers, but the authorities are not few who believe that many 
among them were deaconesses.§ In incidental confirmation of 
this theory we have the fact that the deaconesses of the early 


t+ Dean Howson says, in Evidenttal Value of the Acts of the Apostles: **For 
my part laminclined to think that*the widows’ were . . . enrolled, 
not for the receiving of relief, but for the administration of relief. Itis 
remarkable that the first organization of the deacons, the earliest named 
part of the establishment of a Christian ministry, arose out of questions 
of practicalcharity. If the suggestion I have ventured to make is a sound 
one, the very earliest ministry inthe Church of Christ, under the apostles, 
was a ministry of women for the exercise of sympathetic help.” 


+ See Uhlhorn’s Christian Charity in the Ancient Church. 


§ The word kataheyéoOw (1 Tim. v. 9) means not loosely “taken into the 
number,” as in the Anthorized Version, but **enrolled,” asin the Revised 


2 


Church were at first always chosen from among the ‘“‘ widows ”’ 
and were always over threescore years of age. It is worth while 
to notice, also, in this connection, that it is now generally agreed 
that the yuvaixas of 1 Tim. iii, 11, does not mean ‘ wives.’’ 
Chrysostom says of this passage that it means, not women in 
general, but deaconesses. Jerome, looking back to the deacons 
just preceding, translates it ‘‘ mu/ieres similiter.’’ And following 
many modern authorities also, there is good ground for believ- 
ing thet Paul had in mind here, not the women in general of the 
Church, but the women of the Church who corresponded to the 
deacons of tbe verses preceding. 

But, dismissing these ‘‘ widows ’’—and we speak of them not 
so much argumentatively as suggestively—the Phcebe of Rom. 
xvi, I, has a strong claim to recognition asa deaconess. Ancient 
scholarship accorded her the office unhesitatingly, and modern 
scholarship has struggled with its conservatism until she has at 
last been named a ‘‘ deaconess ” outright in the margin of the 
Revised Version. And it cannot be denied that in the Church of 
the second,* third and fourth centuries deaconesses, or helpin 
widows, were very numerous and very active. They occupie 
an official position,= and were the counterpart of the dea- 
con.t They were even ordained,§ or at least set apart to their 
Version. There may have been a more careful enrollment from the list of 
the widows. Notice the reading preferred by the American revisers for the 
verses following, wherein the younger widows were refused because they 
may reject their first pledge. Some widows doubtless were alms-receivers, 
but how unlikely that the women of this “*number’’ who had houses and 
lands for the exercise of a wide hospitality and other good works, with 
children now grown who would surely, according to apostolic direction, 
support them—how unlikely that such women, a whole class of them, 
should become pensioners on the Church. How much more likely that 
they were women who, by these very characteristics and this very training, 
were now recognized as qualified to become the almoners to others of the 
bounty of the Church. 

A curious variation of the Arabic Version isto the point here. That 
version says boldly, “If a widow be chosen a deacon.” 

*Pliny,inaletterto Trajan, about A. D. 109, asks about the “dua an- 
cille” that are called “ ministra.” The class was evidently known assuch, 
since Pliny gives it the technical explanatory designation. 

tIn the Oriental Churches the deaconess undoubtedly belonged to the 
clergy.—Usihorn'’s Christian Charity in the Ancient Church. 

t This appears constantly in the literature of the early Church. ‘H 
didxovos stands side by side with 0 didxovos in the Apostolic Constitutions and 
in the writings of the Church fathers whenever both classes are mentioned. 
The same form of words are used for the ordaining or setting apart of 
deacons anddeaconesses. The functions of the two differed, however. The 
work of the deaconess was much with her own sex, and was less public 
than that of the deacon. 


One form of the word, didxovos, was at first used for both genders. The 
feminine form, dtaxd vooa, came intonse later. The English Bishop Brown 


is authority for the statement that didxovos is never applied in the secular 
sense to woman. 
$The Apostolic Constitutions say, ‘“* Touching the deaconesses, I, Bar- 


3 


423445 


office by the imposition of hands and by prayer.|| Chrysostom, 
the ‘‘golden-mouthed’’ bishop of Constantinople, was pro- 
foundly impressed with the value of the work of deaconesses,** 
and numbered among them trusted advisers and personal friends. 
The story of his friendship with Olympias, a woman of ‘‘ exqui- 
site beauty ’’ and noble birth, who had given not only herself, 
but her vast fortune to the diaconate, has often been told.tt 

It is not to the purpose, however, to tracein detail the history 
of woman’s diaconate in the early Church, its wide scope, and 
later decay. It is enough to show, as has been done, that prob- 
ably in the time of the apostles and certainly in the years imme- 
diately following, when the Church, still directly under apos- 
tolic influence, was slowly crystallizing into organized form, the 
place of woman as an officer in tbe Church was clearly recog- 
nized and authorized. And that notwithstanding her exceedingly 
circumscribed social position. 

Let us now turn from God’s written will to those conditions 
of human society in whose significant undertone we hear his 
voice speaking to his Church and saying: ‘‘In these needs also 
find your call toservice. Let the empty mouths and the half- 
clad bodies of the poor, let the starving souls of the rich whom 
you tever reach with your preached Gospel, let the moans of the 
uncared-for sick and dying and the needs of friendless children 
be as the voice of the Son of man pleading with you for relief.’’ 
In the light of such a call can we not see how pitiable is our in- 
adequacy? The question resolves itself into simply this: Can 
the Church as at present organized—excluding the deaconess 
movement, which is hardly yet an appreciable force in our 
midst—meet all the demands of society that it ought to meet? 


tholomew, do thus ordain: O bishop, thou shalt lay on her thy hands in 
the presence of the presbytery, of the deacons and deaconesses, and thou 
shalt say, ‘Oeternal God,’’’etc. But her duties are limited. She must not 
“ bless”’ (pronounce the benediction), and must not baptize; for “* to ordain 
female priests would be pagan.’ 

A canon of the Nicene Council (A. D. 326) ordained deaconesses in the 
Church. Western gatherings of the Church from A. D. 440 on, including 
the Synod of Orange and the Council of Orleans, forbid the ordaining of 
any more “‘ widows who are called deaconesses.”’ 


||This is not stated to broach in any way a disquieting claim to similar 
recogn tion in modern times, but simply as a curious fact of history. The 
laying on of hands seems not to have been as formal and technical an act 
in ancient times as it has since become. Doubtless the acts of ordination 
and benediction shaded into each other. 

** Speaking of Ph cebe (Rom. xvi, 1), Chrysostom says: ‘‘See how many 
ways he[Paul] takes to give her dignity. Forhe has both mentioned her 
before the rest and called her sister. It is no mean thing to becalled a 
sister of Paul. Moreover, he has added to her rank by mentioning her be- 
ing adeaconess. Paul places on each side this blessed woman her praises.”’ 
—Homilies on Romans. 

+t Seventeen of the two hundred and forty-two letters of Chrysostom 
still extant are addressed to Olympias. 


4 


LUCY RIDER MEYER 


5 


- 


Let it be distinctly understood that the efficiency of the Gospel 
message is not questioned here, but only the present sufficiency 
and adaptability of the means for conveying that message. And 
it is contended that there isan urgent need, not only of the admin- 
istrative and teaching ministry of men, supplemented by such 
social and physical ministry as they may be able to give, but 
also of the characteristic ministry of women. 

We may look, for instance, at the need among children. The 
eminent French philanthropist, M. Georges Bonjean, made the 
astounding assertion ‘some years ago that according to careful 
calculation there were in France one hundred thousand children, 
between the ages of twelve and sixteen, who were outcast or 
youthful criminais* (‘‘abandonnes ou coupables”). . It makes 
the brain reel and the heart swell to bursting to think of what 
underlies this condition, of the vast mass of slum-born suffering 
babyhood that makes possible this great army of a hundred 
thousand outcast youth. The better moral and industrial con- 
ditions of America prevent our statistics from rising to such 
frightful heights, but every thoughtful student of the situation 
knows that there are hundreds and thousands of outcast or 
abandoned children in the United States. They are in our poor- 
houses, or absolutely unsheltered and unmothered on our city 
streets. And has the Church of God no responsibility concern- 
ing these little ones? Has it forgotten that childhood is God’s 
special time of opportunity for inculcating religious truth? We 
mourn over the obduracy of the adult sinner and train all our 
strong batteries of argument and effort to heat down the hard walls 
of his habitand prejudice, while we neglect the low swinging por- 
tal of the heart of the child, ready to yield at the gentlest touch. 
But as the Church is now organized, with its unofficial women 
members occupied so largely with social duties or blessedly busy 
with family cares, can it do more than the most fragmentary 
work for orphan and needy children? According toour last Year 
Book, itis taking the efforts and contributions of almost three 
thousand of our Church members to care for one orphan child.’’+ 

But look in another direction, at the tens of thousands of not 
entirely abandoned but criminally neglected children. The 
evangel of the public school is doing much for the general intel- 
ligence of its pupils, but there are hundreds of thousands of chil- 
dren in the great cities of the United States not reached at all by 
the public school. For instance, a study of the school census of 


* Quoted in leaflet by the late Pastor Hocart, calling attention to the 
work of his daughter’s ‘‘ Maison des Enfants,’ 31 Rue de Corneille, Levalois- 
Perret, pres Paris. 

} There are 1,020 children listed in the Year Book as the average attend- 
ancein our children’s homes aud orphauages—pp. 105-111. But our total 
lay membership in the United States is 2,716,652. See page 33 of Year Book. 


6 


the city of Chicago reveals some startling facts. In the twenty- 
four central wards of that city there were, by the census of 1898, 
242,780 children of school age—that is, between six and fourteen. 
According to the report of the Board of Education there were at 
that time only 114,665 sittings in the public school] buildings of 
these twenty-four wards; less than half that of the number of 
school childreny Allowing 50,000 for children who may have 
been attending private and parochial schools, and for those en- 
joying the partial relief of half-day sessions—and this estimate is 
a liberal one—it still remains true that there were more than 
75,000 children in the heart of the second greatest city of our 
land who were not in any school whatever.t 

But what of the moral and spiritual training of even that part 
of the children who are in the public school? The government 
of Mexico, though it represents a reaction against the most com- 
mon form of religion in that country, has put into its public 
schools an excellent text-book on ethics; but there is no required 
ethical teaching in the United States. Maultitudes of children in 
our public schools are never found in any place of religious 
teaching. They never hear a prayer, and are in sucb ignorance 
of the bare historical facts of Christianity that it is easy to cite 
case after case where even the names of God have been known 
only as convenient bywords—blasphemy itself condoned by 
ignorance. 

Moreover, what as to the industrial and social future of these 
children? Occasionally an exceptionally advanced public school 
touches the border of ‘‘ manual training ’’—teaches a boy to drive 
a nail and a girl to sew a seam—but not one gives them a trade. 
Our Trades Unions make the old-fashioned apprenticeship next 
to impossible. Our few manual training schools are far too ex- 
pensive for the many, not to speak of the further complicating 
fact that the almost exclusive division of labor into ‘‘ piece 
work ”’ is greatly lessening the possibility that even the boy who 
has a trade will be able to earn a living by it. How are these 
children of the slums going to learn how to earn a respectable 
livelihood when the time comes that they must shift for them- 
selves? Has the Church of God no responsibility in this matter? 
Has it no golden opportunity? What if it has not yet fully 
thought through the problem, shall it withhold a present, 
practical help, even if partial, because it cannot make a theory 
of perfect eventual relief? Shall it hesitate as to its own plain 
duty while speculating as to what the State ought todo? What 
if teaching the industries and feeding the hungry is not the 
highest function of the Church? Jesus Christ fed the hungry in 
emergencies. The apostolic church fed the hungry in emer- 


t For this statistical study the author is indebted to Dr. W. E. McLen- 
nan, pastor of Trinity Church, Chicago. 


7 


gencies. Perhaps the profoundest impression upon society 
made by the early Church was because of its feeding the hungry 
and clothing the naked.§ And is there not an emergency now? 
Let it be conceded that it is the State that should be charged 
with the duty of giving her children such a start in life that with 
honest labor they may gain at least a respectable living; the fact 
is the State is not doing it. Moreover, tillthere shall be wrought 
a vast change of public sentiment on this subject, the State can- 
not do it. It has not the buildings, it has not the money to pay 
teachers. But the Church has hundreds of millions of dollars’ 
worth of magnificent buildings, used now but six or eight hours 
aweek. It hasa great body of women, unemployed, or inade- 
quately employed, who, once their eyes were opened to the need 
of such work, would volunteer to doit. Ought it not to throw 
open its buildings and establish and operate a thousand indus- 
trial schools, where cooking, and dressmaking, and housekeep- 
ing shall be so thoroughly taught to the girl of ten or twelve 
that she shall not at fourteen or fifteen be driven into the ‘‘ ways 
that take hold on hell’’ by the bay of the gray wolf of starvation 
at her heels? And schools where boys may learn to use their 
hands in such a way that in the swift-coming years they may 
not be forced into the life of a criminal for lack of food to eat?* 
And especially since the prosecution of this work opens up 
the most admirable opportunities for the molding of character 
and furthering of spiritual development. 

But look at still another great class of needs: those, physical 
and spiritual, when the body is laid low by sickness. Only 
within the last few years, and largely because of the sentiment 
which our few deaconesses have created, has the modern Church 
so much as recognized that it had the slightest responsibility in 
this matter. The early Church, with its great ‘‘ hospices,’’ was 
not so blind. Our Lord’s command was not only ‘* Preach the 
Gospel,” but ‘‘Heal the sick.”+ What a painfully imperfect 
understanding is that which makes it the duty of all ages to 
preach the Gospel, yet practically declares the duty of healing 


§ Julian the apostate, speaking of the ‘‘ Galileans,”’ tells us that by their 
charity to the poor they “‘ begot the greatest admiration for their religion 
in the minds of men.’? He even urged systematic efforts among heathen for 
the relief of poverty, declaring, ‘‘It is disgraceful, when there is not a beg- 
gar found among the Jews, and when the godless Galileaus support our 
poor as their own, that our people should be without our help.”—Sozomen 
Ec. Hist., v, 16. 

* Said a New York Judge of the Supreme Court a few years ago, **There 
is a large class—I was about to say a majority—of the population of New 
York and Brooklyn who just live, and to whom the rearing of two or more 
children means inevitabiy a boy for the penitentiary and a girl for the 
brothel.”—Henry George's Social Preblems, p.98. Quoted by Josiah Strong 
in Our Country. 


t Matt. x, 7, 8;. Luke ix, 2; x, 9. 


the sick to have ceased with the miraculous gifts of the apostolic 
age. Illness, like childhood, is a God-given opportunity for 
religious influence. When flesh and heart grow weak and hands 
are stretched out for help in mortal agony, when dear ones are 
passing into the vast unknown and solemn thoughts. of the life 
hereafter are forced upon the mind, or when long days of conva- 
lescence come and there is ‘‘nothing to do but think,” then 
words concerning Jesus, aud siv, and heaven are seed falling 
into good ground. Do we not owe it to the world that wherever - 
trembling hands are stretched out, groping in the dark, some 
agent of the Church be there, some representative of Jesus Christ, 
with comfort and help? If we were wise to see and seize these 
opportunities, if we had trained, tactful servants of the Church 
ready to take advantage of them, we might in the first decade of 
the century just dawning win half the world for Christ. Yet the 
Cburch can never seriously undertake to care for the sick with- 
out the help of the official women. None other will have at her 
command uninterrupted time for such service, and none other 
will have the requisite skill, for this helper must be technically 
trained. 

With the thought of the modern world’s great need in mind 
we may well turn again for a moment to the history of woman’s 
diaconate. It never lapsed entirely; the organized, authorized 
work of women was too vital to the well-being of the Church to 
permit the loss of the idea. Underneath the perverted forms of 
the Roman Catholic Church we find it still struggling for exis- 
tence. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it broke out ina 
most interesting and curious movement—little companies of 
pious women, the Beguines, lightly bound by rules, devoting 
themselves to works of mercy, the care of children and the sick. 
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the corruption and 
decay of these Beguines, but the rise of the ‘‘ Sisters of Common 
Life,’’ whose work was also largely objective. But in the seven- 
teenth century, in the founding by Vincent de Paul of the order 
of the ‘‘ Sisters of Charity,’’ the Roman Church most nearly ap- 
proached the diaconate of the early times. Vincent de Paul was 
its Fliedner. To him that Church is very largely indebted for 
practical methods of organizing women, not for the cloister but 
for objective benevolent work. 

The women in various branches of this order in the early 
days were not nuns; they were not bound by lifelong vows. 
They were free to come and go as needed. The beautiful direc- 
tions of Vincent de Paul are still extant, ‘‘ Your convent must be | 
the home of the sick; your cell the chamber of suffering; your 
chapel the parish church; your cloister the streets of the city or 
the wards of the hospital; your rule the general vow of obedi- 
ence; your grille the fear of God; your veil, to shut out the 


9 


world, holy modesty.’’ But the rules of this and similar orders 


hardly waited their founder’s death to be modified in harmony 
with the monastic spirit, when very much less of liberty was 
allowed. Vows were made burdensome, and obligations to for- 
mal devotions at very frequent intervals interfered greatly with 
practical work. This is true also of the multitudinous Roman 
orders of women at the present time. While woman’s activities 
in the Roman Church have undoubtedly deeply influenced 
Protestantism we do not find there at any time the true diaconate 
of woman. 

It is exceedingly interesting to observe, in certain reforma- 
tory movements of the Church before the Reformation proper, 
attempts to reinstate the Early Church diaconate of women. 
The Waldenses in France, the Moravians in Bohemia, and the 
Mennonites in the Netherlands endeavored to reinstate isolated 
deaconesses in their congregations. There was, however, no 
endeavor to connect with these efforts that which history would 
seem to show to be essential to permanency and success—the 
sisterhood life, and the attempts are principally interesting as 
showing the persistence of the idea. Luther took no energetic 
steps toward the retention of sisterhoods in the Reformed 
Church,* but there is no lack of testimony from him as to his 
recognition of the value of woman’s religious work, and even 
of that work carried on through sisterhoods, free, of course, from 
the compulsions and corruptions only too common in Romanism.t+ 
There was, however, so much well-founded dread in Protestant- 
ism of the convent system as illustrated in the Roman Church, 
that all that was done for centuries to reinstate the diaconate of 
women was some feeble attempt here and there to appoint a 
congregational deaconess, notably in the congregations of the 
Puritans and in the Reformed Church of Germany. It remained 
for the good Lutheran pastor, Theodore Fliedner, to bring about 
in Germany, in the first half of the nineteenth century the true 


* But Luther wrote, in 1532, to the senate of the city of Herford, which 
was planning to abolish its convents: ‘*Inasmuch as these. . . sisters 
lead an honest life, and have an honorable, well-conducted community, 
moreover as they faithfully honor and obey the pure doctrine, it is mv 
friendly petition that . .. you will allow them to wear their clerical habit 
and practice all praiseworthy customs. For such convents please me 
beyond measure.” 


t+ The election of the seven (Acts vi.) and the remembrance of the char- 
itable work of the Church could not fail to direct Luther’s attention to the 
diaconate. He says, ‘“‘ It were well, it we had the right kind of people to 
begin it, that the city be divided into four or five parts, and each part be 
assigned a pastor and several deacons, who would supply that district with 
preaching and almsgiving, visiting the sick, etc.” Here the entire province 
of the diaconate, as a personal office for rendering bodily and spiritual aid, 
is placed besi¢e that of the ministry. Had such an arrangement been prac- 
ticable, Christian women would have undoubtedly found their place in it. 
—Emil Wacker, in The Deaconess Calling. 


10 


renaissance of the office of deaconess. He saw, as did no other 
of his times, the possibilities of the organized work of Christian 
women. The social status of women in Germany sixty years ago, 
the conservatism of our Teutonic cousins, and lower moral plane 
of the Lutheran Church in Germany—which for instance, evento 
this date permits the Kaiserswerth work to be aided by great lot- 
teries carried on under the ‘‘mother house’’ roof—made it 
inevitable that the work of the Fliedner deaconesses, judged by 
American standards, should be limited. Even at the present 
time, though their number has increased amazingly and their 
influerce in philanthropy has been immense, yet we find 
Lutheran deaconesses mostly as nurses and as caretakers in 
orphanages and reformatories. But it is to be gratefully noted 
not only that Fliedner brought into the modern world a workable 
plan for a Protestant sisterhood, but that our present splendid 
system of nurses’ training schools, the civilized world over, 
originated directly in his effort to train Christian women to care 
for the sick. For Florence Nightingale and Agnes Jones drew 
not only their skill, but to a large extent their inspiration, from 
Kaiserswerth. tL 

But the deaconess movement in American Methodism is strik- 
ingly spontaneous. It is not a growth from the German root. 
Its workers bear the same name as those in Germany, and do in 
some respects a similar work, but it originated independently 
and on a far broader and more evangelistic basis. About the 
time Fliedner was founding his deaconess ‘‘ mother house’”’ in 
Germany the women in England and America were organizing 
their missionary ‘‘ Female Prayer Meetings,’’ and one-third of a 
century later the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church was struck out of the hearts of 
women white-hot with love and pity for the woes of their heathen 
sisters. A decade later the undenominational Woman’s Christian 
Temperance Union was organized, affecting all classes, but 
Methodism very deeply. Then came the Woman’s Home Mis- 
sionary Society in Methodism, born out of a great desire to help 
the ignorant and godless of our own land. Women were not 
only going forward to meet their share of the responsibilities of 
a lost world, but they were rapidly learning wisdom. They were 
perceiving the tremendous advantages of organization. Allthese 
movements were prophetic of the organic innovation coming to 
the Church in the aptly-named Deaconess Movement. 

There was established in Chicago, in 1885, a date which Dr. 
Abel Stevens says ‘‘ will hereafter be commemorated as an his- 
toricai epoch in American Methodism,’’ { the first center in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church to which women believing them- 


+ Central Christian Advocate, 1893. 
11 


selves called of God for special religious work could gather and 
in which they could receive preparation for that work. It soon 
became also a meeting place for missionaries, and an institution 
in which women not intending to enter any mission field might 
nevertheless study the Bible and social problems. The sponta- 
neity of the movement is strikingly illustrated by the fact that 
this institution, the Chicago Training School for City, Home and 
Foreign Missions, was established not in connection with any 
society,§ but by the personal efforts of a few individuals. It was, 
however, promptly recognized by the Annual Conference within 
whose territory it was established. Two years later the deacon- 
ess work proper of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America 
had its first informal beginnings in the Chicago Training School. 
With the preparation and oncoming of companies of women, 
and the increasingly loud call from the great city in the midst of 
which the school was located, the result was inevitable. Here 
was the need, here was the means to meet the need ; they could 
not fail to come together. It was as if God had opened a door 
and thrust one through it. Not till months afterward did the 
founders of the work in America learn that the effort in the 
United States was closely akin to the work of the Lutheran dea- 
conesses across the water, and that there was in existence in that 
country a little nucleus of Methodist deaconesses. For those 
German Methodist deaconesses, while intensely evangelical, 
were very naturally patterning closely after the Lutheran sisters 
in organization and work, and they had not then become an 
_appreciable force in Methodism. 

The first deaconess institution in American Methodism* was 
the Chicago Deaconess Home, established in the building of the 
Chicago Training School in June, 1887. It received the recog- 
nition of the Rock River Annual Conference, in which Chicago 
is located, a few months later. It attracted much attention. 
After nearly a year of successful operation a memorial concern- 
ing it went up to the General Conference of 1888. It fell into 
the hands of Dr.—now Bishop—Thoburn, who for years had 
been planning for some kind of a sisterhood to reinforce mission 
work among women in India, and now he came bringing also a 
memorial, from the Bengal Conference, looking to this object. 


§ The Woman’s Foreign and the Womau’s Home Missionary Societies 
were both informally represented in the first committees of the Training 
School, ladies being asked to serve who were known to be active in these 
societies. The school had not been in existence a month before both soci- 
ties formally recommendedit. It has, moreover, from time to time received 
small douations from bothsocieties. But it is, and always has been, organ- 
ically independent of any organization but the Church itself. 


* The limits of this article do not permit mention of the much smaller 
work of the Protestant Episcopal and the Lutheran deaconessesin America. 


12 


To the Missionary Committee, of which Dr. Thoburn was chair- 
man, this memorial and the one from Chicago were referred, and 
it was largely by the doctor’s earnest advocacy that favorable 
legislation was secured. In the General Conference of I900 the 
paragraphs ‘‘ On Deaconesses” were recast, and adopted as they 
now appear in the present Discipline. No formal definition of a 
deaconess is given, but all the characteristics which had been 
stamped upon the deaconess in the spontaneous development of 
the movement are therein recognized. _ She is a trained free vol- 
unteer, usually living in an institution. She is unsalaried, but 
‘‘entitled to support.’’ She is licensed aad ‘‘ consecrated’”’ by 
the authorities of the Church. She is bound by no vows. Her 
preparatory course of study is by no means nominal. It is nearly 
always taken in a training school. When consecrated she be- 
comes a Church officer. The bishop, in the beautiful Consecra- 
tion Service, takes her by the hand and says, ‘‘I admit thee to 
the office.’”” Whether in or out of institutions she is directly 
under the care of the Board of Bishops, which has become a 
** General Deaconess Board ’’ for ‘‘ general supervision over all 
deaconess work throughout the Church.’”’ The Annual Confer- 
ence ‘‘ Deaconess Boards,’’ however, have certain responsibili- 
ties, chief among which is the granting of the license of the 
deaconess. The approval of the Conference itself must be given 
every year for the continuance of the deaconess in office, re- 
minding one of the ‘‘ passing of character’’ of the deacons. 
Transfers to and from Annual Conferences must be made with 
the approval of the District Bishops. Deaconesses in institu- 
tions are under the immediate direction of the superintendent of 
the institution 

Once given ecclesiastical recognition the deaconess move- 
ment immediately entered upon a period of development so 
rapid that it has been difficult to supply it with the necessary 
workers. In December, 1888, the second home was established, 
the great Gamble Home—and, later, Hospital—in Cincinnati. 
The year 1889 was marked by the opening of deaconess homes 
in New York, Boston and Minneapolis. Wesley Hospital was 
organized in Chicago, the first in America under deaconess 
auspices. It was in this year also that the Woman’s Home Mis- 
sionary Society, at its annual meeting in November, resolved to 
combine with its growing activities, methods of deaconess work.+ 


t This society held from the first the ideal of training for its employes. 
But the four most characteristic features of a deaconess—namely, that she 
is (1) unsalaried, (2) costumed, (3) adopts usually the community life, and 
especially (4) that she is by her license and consecration recognized as an 
officer in the Church—had their providential rise in American Methodism 
in the work started in Chicago, June, 1887, and were now for the first time 
adopted by the Woman’s Home Missionary Society for its workers. 


13 


The first home under the auspices of this society was opened in 

Detroit in January, 1890. 

At the present time there are about eighty centers t of dea- 
coness work in the United States, including three Orphanages 
and Children’s Homes, three Old People’s Homes, and seventeen 
Hospitals. There are, including probationers, about eight 
hundred women devoting themselves to this work, Including 
the three hundred Methodist deaconesses of Germany and the 
sixty in foreign mission fields, for which this kind of work is 
admirably adapted, there are eleven hundred and sixty deacon- 
esses and probationers in the Methodist Episcopal Church.|| 
The German Methodists in America have taken up the work with 
enthusiasm, giving this branch of the work a strong impulse 
toward the ‘‘mother-house”’ idea, as is the case with all the 
work in Germany. 

“The most characteristic feature of deaconess work in Ameri- 
can Methodism is its spontaneity. Though greatly aided and 
strengthened by its recognition by the General Conference it did 
not originate with that body. The women themselves had inau- 
gurated the work, had mastered the initial difficulties, and had 
carried on the work almost a year before General Conference 
recognition. That recognition was, indeed, almost wholly be- 
cause of the work. The real origin of the work in America was, 

‘her-instinct of woman herself, and in that wider con- 

- woman’s ‘‘family duties ” that compels her to include 

ving care the great needy world-family as well as the 

_.. .ttle domestic circle. And the development of the work 

is satisfactory and expansive just in proportion as in its details 

and responsibilities it is laid directly on the hearts and hands 
of the deaconesses themselves.* 

As to the character of the work being done by deaconesses, 


+ Reckoning as “‘ceuters”’ places where not less than two deaconesses 
areat work. About thirty “stations,” places at which a single deaconess 
is at work, are also scattered throughout the country. 


§ Adding the three deaconess hospitals in Germany, at Frankfort-on- 
Main, Berlin and Hamburg, we havea total of twenty deaconess hospitals 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church. These hospitals cared for more than 
ten thousand resident patients last year, with much dispensary and outside 
work. 


|| See Methodist Year Book, 1901, p. 119. 


*In America, in the English-speaking work, nearly all the homes and 
hospitals have deaconess superintendents, unsalaried, of course, as is the 
case with all deaconesses. Upon the shoulders of a deaconess rest all the 
detail work and the full financial responsibility of an orphanage containing 
more than ninety children. Deaconesses are successfully managing a large 
hospital in Omaha, which last year cared for eight hundred and ninety- 
eight patients, and a e collecting money fora great building. Soin scores 
of similar instances. 


14 


the two original ideas in America were the religious visitation of 
the neglected in great cities and nursing the sick poor in their 
own homes. But in the rapid development of the movement 
other work has sought these willing hands. As may be seen by 
reference to our Year Book, orphanages, hospitals, settlements, 
homes for the aged, even literary schools—all sorts of helpful 
institutions—have been established by deaconesses or have been 
put into their hands by a confident Church or by philanthropic 
individuals. Literary, enterprises have been undertaken.+ 
About two million dollars’ worth of property and endowment is 
now being used in deaconess work. Land, private houses, school 
and hospital buildings are seeking deaconess ownership quite as 
fast as deaconesses can be prepared to take wise possession. 
Among our eleven hundred and sixty deaconesses there are 
nurses, caretakers of children and the aged, matrons, singers, 
kindergartners, stenographers, financial agents, physicians, 
teachers in literary schools, editors, evangelists, and superin- 
tendents of homes and hospitals. Many women have left lucra- 
tive positions to devote themselves to this work. Someare using 
their own private funds to support themselves in it. There is 
nothing that a Christian woman can do, and that needs to be 
undertaken in tbe church, which may not be done by the dea- 
coness. She is free to do anything; she is trained to undertake 
with courage and devotion whatever may be put into her hands. 
She has no vow of service, but a loving will that is stronger than 
vows pledges her to move against the mountain of human sorrow 
and need, with the assurance tbat it will in God’s good time be 
removed. 

By far the most urgent need of the Deaconess Movement at 
present is more workers. In the Roman Church of America 
alone—including Canada—there are to-day more than sixty 
thousand Sisters of Mercy,* a very large majority of whom are 
actively prosecuting the most practical forms of benevolent work, 
They educate and care for the youth, of whom they have consid- 
erably more than half a millionin hand. They nurse the sick 
and aid in all sorts of reformatory work. They have charge of 
six hundred and ninety-five houses of mercy—hospitals, homes 
for the aged, orphanages, industrial schools—and are founding 
new ones almost every day. Their hospitals alone number one 
hundred and sixty-seven. Honor to them. But does the devo- 
tion of the women of that Church, where entering a religious 


+ A book on Deaconess Work has been written by a deaconess. A 
monthly periodical with a circulation of about twenty-thousand is sent out 
by deaconesses. 


* Catholic Directory for 1900. Official. Published by M. H. Wiltzius & 
Co., Milwatfkee, Wis. 


15 


order means so often a living entombment, exceed that of the 
women of our Church in which to enter this office means a life 
of free and joyous service for Christ? Wo does not know that 
The Teal work, the tlhe Work Of The Roman Catholic Church 
in America has been done very largely by its women? It is 
their devoted service in hospital and yellow fever camp that has 
not only gained friends and converts to the Church by scores 
and thousands, but has created an enormous public sentiment in 
its favor and brought money by the millions of dollars into its 
treasuries. It is their quiet but unceasing work with the young 
that gains adherents by the hundreds of thousands. But the 
women of Methodism, breathed upon by a wind from heaven, 
are ‘“‘rising up,’’ ‘‘at ease’’ no longer, and are coming forward 
to do the same work—nay, a better, purer, more spiritual work 
for our beloved Church. Nearly eleven hundred volunteers in 
fourteen years—that is their record. And the number through 
two quadrenniums has increased at the annual rate of twenty-six 
percent. Two hundred and fifty thousand religious calls made 
last year! Twenty thousand religious meetings held with moth- 
ers and children! A score of hospitals established and in hand, 
wherein were cared for by Methodist deaconesses last year more 
than ten thousand patients, not to speak of the half as many 
more pocr sick ones given loving Christian ministration in their 

wun homes. Do we understand the significance of this already 
great work? Who can realize what it will mean to Protestantism 
when the Mother shall bave been fully established again in her 
place in the Household of Faith? 


From the ‘‘Methodist Review,’ New York, 
September—October, 1901. 


16 


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